Garena, the gaming division of Singapore tech giant Sea, has partnered with Tez Platforms, the consumer technology venture of the Hiranandani Group, to return to India’s burgeoning esports sector after more than three years.
On July 7, the online games developer kick-started registrations for the Tez Free Fire Max India Cup 2025 tournament within its gaming title Free Fire Max.
“India’s gaming community and esports landscape are evolving at an incredible pace, and this collaboration marks a significant step toward nurturing homegrown talent and building a vibrant, future-ready esports ecosystem” Tez Platforms chairman Darshan Hiranandani told Moneycontrol.
The tournament will be Garena’s first major competitive after 2022 when the government suspended one of its flagship games, Free Fire, citing security concerns.
Free Fire Max is an enhanced version of the Free Fire title, featuring enhanced graphics and animations, designed for high-end devices.
The tournament has a prize pool of Rs 1 crore and will be held from July 13 to September 28.
“We’re especially excited about the upcoming Tez Free Fire MAX India Cup, which will bring together players from across the nation in a celebration of skill, strategy, and competitive spirit,” Hiranandani said. Details of the partnership were not disclosed.
The Hiranandani Group set up Tez Platforms in February 2022 to tap into opportunities in sectors such as gaming and esports, social media, entertainment, e-commerce, personal mobility, and emerging tech-enabled solutions in areas such as artificial intelligence among others.
The group had stated plans to invest around Rs 3,500 crore over a period of two-three years.
Free Fire India launch in limbo
This development comes amid growing speculation about the return of the Free Fire game to India.
In August 2023, Garena had announced plans to reintroduce Free Fire, as an India-exclusive app called Free Fire India, after its suspension in February 2022.
Free Fire was among the 54 China-linked apps banned by the government. Prior to its suspension, Free Fire was the highest revenue generating app across Google Play and Apple's App Store in the country.
Garena had partnered with Yotta, a Hiranandani Group company and a MeitY-empanelled cloud service provider, to provide local cloud hosting and storage infrastructure for Free Fire India. At the time, the company said that Yotta would manage the personal data of Indian users on local servers and offer network connectivity services to support Garena’s product offerings in India.
With this move, Garena appeared to take a leaf out of rival Krafton’s playbook, which relaunched the banned PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) mobile title as a India-only title Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) in July 2021, with assurances to store user data locally.
BGMI faced a 10-month suspension between July 2022 and May 2023 before making a comeback.
Garena had also brought onboard former Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni as its brand ambassador, who was set to appear as a playable character named Thala in the game. Dohni is referred to as Thala, which means leader or head in Tamil, by Chennai Super King fans, the IPL team that won five titles under him.
In addition, Free Fire India was expected to include features and content tailored to the local market.
However, a day before the launch in September 2023, Garena postponed put it off bt “a few more weeks” ,saying it wanted to ensure the "best possible experience to all of our Free Fire India fans".
The government had banned only the standard version of Free Fire, while Free Fire Max remained available on Google Play.
Sources have told Moneycontrol that Garena has considered dropping plans to relaunch Free Fire in India and instead focus on Free Fire Max. The company is yet to respond to Moneycontrol’s queries.
Free Fire Max topped India’s mobile gaming revenue charts in FY25 and also posted the highest growth among all games available in the country, according to app intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
Mobile games in India generated a total of $400 million in in-app purchase revenue during FY25, the firm said.
As of June 2024, India accounted for nearly 50 percent of Free Fire Max’s lifetime revenue, totalling about $326.3 million, according to mobile app data platform AppMagic.
Garena recently shut down one of its Pune-based gaming studios, Versus Game Studio, which was developing a mobile fighting game featuring heroes from Indian epics. High Chaos Run reported this development.
The company operates two studios in India. A Pune-based studio is working on a cricket title, the other, in Mumbai, is developing a Ludo game.
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